Delbarton School graduate has helmet industry heading in the right direction

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerHun School football team members Matt O'Brien (left) and David Dudeck place their old football helmets into a cart after receiving 12 donated Xenith helmets. The new helmets are designed to reduce the instances of player concussion.

Vin Ferrara was at home in January 2004 watching an NHL game when former Rangers center Eric Lindros, skating along the boards, was knocked to the ice after a hard hit from a Washington Capitals player. Lindros sustained the eighth diagnosed concussion of his career.

“I was bothered by it,” said Ferrara, a 1991 graduate of Morristown’s Delbarton School, “and hooked on it from then on, that there had to be a better way.”

Ferrara, who has medical and business degrees from Columbia University, had the right credentials to figure out that way. A former quarterback at Harvard and Delbarton, Ferrara started with the sport he knew best and targeted one of the scariest injuries in sports.

He founded his own company, Xenith, with the intention of developing a football helmet that attempts to reduce the risk of traumatic brain injuries prevalent in athletics. Between 1.6 and 3.8 million concussions are suffered each year through sports and recreation, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An inspiration Ferrara had while squeezing a saline solution bottle, along with more than $12 million in financing and input from a Canadian human kinetics professor and national brain injury experts, yielded the Xenith X1 football helmet.

The new technology replaces traditional helmet padding with shock absorbers that vent air based on the force of impact -- much like a saline solution bottle does when squeezed -- and redefines how equipment can lessen the force of a blow.

After test-driving the helmet at hundreds of high schools and colleges, including Delbarton and Princeton, Xenith began its first public sale season last November. About 400 youth teams, 600 high schools and 200 colleges have players wearing the X1 this fall, and four NFL teams have also placed orders.

“The data is very promising, from what I understand, to decrease the force to the brain,” said Christopher Nowinski, president of the Sports Legacy Institute, which studies the effects of sports-related brain injuries. “Helmets will probably never be able to prevent concussions. But better helmets are a piece to the puzzle.”

Helmets, of course, have come a long way from the soft leather caps worn at the game’s inception. The principles of physics have since been maximized to develop better means of protecting players’ heads.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerDelbarton School grad Vin Ferrara, co-inventor of the new Xenith helmet, talks to the Hun School football team about them before 12 of the helmets are donated to the team.

The development of the hard plastic helmet in 1939 was a critical step forward. If the material is rigid enough, the force of the collision will be distributed over the entire surface area of the helmet rather than concentrated at the point of contact -- which can reduce the force of the blow sustained by the player by about 10 times.

Another way to protect the head is by increasing the time of the collision, the principle around which the X1 helmets have been designed. During a hit, the player’s head undergoes a change in momentum, or an impulse, equal to the force of impact multiplied by the duration of the collision. While the magnitude of the impulse cannot be changed, the force the head feels can be decreased by increasing the time of collision.

Helmets with padding also work in this manner, as the compression of the plastic foam during a hit increases the time of collision. But the X1 helmet takes this concept a step farther.

“Most other helmets will make a slab of foam denser or thicker, and that’s your engineering,” said Blaine Hoshizaki, the Canadian professor who runs a neurotrauma impact laboratory and collaborated with Ferrara on the design. “We really looked at impact dynamics, and engineered the air cells to decrease the amount of trauma transferred to the brain.”

Inside the X1 helmet are 18 cylindrical, thermoplastic air chambers, each with a small hole. When a football player is hit, the chambers begin to flatten as they absorb the impact. This increases the pressure inside the chambers and slows their compression. Because they compress more slowly and completely than traditional padding, the result is a longer collision time and a smaller force experienced by the player.

After the collision, air flows back into each chamber through its air hole to spring back to shape quickly for the next down. The chambers can thus withstand multiple collisions, unlike padding, which is crushed with each successive hit and becomes less and less effective.

The chambers also adapt to the intensity of the collision, in the same way you feel more resistance the faster you push a bike pump. In laboratory tests, the X1 helmet reduced acceleration of the head in low- to high-energy hits, and also maintained its integrity through hundreds of impacts.

Since concussions are not black-and-white injuries, it’s difficult to put a number on how much a helmet reduces concussion risk. Ferrara and the rest of his Xenith company -- which includes several other Delbarton graduates -- market not just their innovative technology but also a holistic concussion-prevention approach to educate players, coaches and parents about proper helmet fit and reporting head injuries.

The safety-first approach appealed to Delbarton football coach Brian Bowers, who had 10 freshmen try the helmet last season and planned to phase in Xenith helmets to his varsity team this year. “Any choice I make as a coach, that’s the No. 1 factor in it,” he said.

One secondary factor in the helmet’s appeal is its ease to fit, thanks to a flexible shock bonnet that is pulled snug on a player’s head by simply tugging on the chin straps. It also requires less fuss than some other models, which have add-ons like extra padding or air cushions that need to be refilled manually like bicycle tires.

The X1 is one of four helmets -- along with two Riddell models and the Schutt DNA -- Princeton’s football team uses. Head athletic trainer Charlie Thompson said he doesn’t pigeonhole the players into a specific model, but was impressed with the design and fit of the Xenith helmet, particularly for players with a concussion history.

“It’s probably the most comfortable helmet I’ve ever had on,” said offensive tackle J.P. Makrai, who has had a handful of concussions in the past and was one of the first Princeton players to try the X1 in spring ball. “The way it fit reassures me the most. It just feels and fits right.”

The price of the X1 is $350, on the high end for helmets. Xenith also has to compete with industry giants Schutt and Riddell, which have popular models ranging between $150 and $275. Xenith has programs, like buy 10 and get two free, which help bring down the cost somewhat.

NFL players can wear any helmet approved by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, which the X1 passed in 2007. Xenith is one of four brands currently worn, but Riddell is the NFL’s official helmet maker and is the only name that can appear on a player’s helmet. Riddell has a contract with the league to furnish a certain number of helmets to teams, and its products are worn by more than 80 percent of the league.

Ferrara, though, is excited about the unique approach Xenith has brought to the helmet industry. He hopes that football is just the start -- and that his Massachusetts-based company can carry its technology forward to helmets for other sports and even the military.

“I definitely get up every day excited about what I’m doing,” Ferrara said. “I can’t imagine a better use of my energy, interest and background.”